Re: Parents, do your due diligence on vaccination! There are serious risks!!

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Originally Posted by ChuckF

Sorry guys, zero fucks given.

It's really just nitpicking. There's the technical aspect of proper titles, but that pales in comparison to the fact that Wakefield lost his license to practice medicine by unethically conducting research.

Re: Parents, do your due diligence on vaccination! There are serious risks!!

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Originally Posted by peacegirl

It would be irresponsible to administer marijuana to a child who has a fragile medical condition without independent ethical oversight due to possible misuse or potential harm. A parent would welcome that kind of oversight knowing his child may benefit from the therapy.

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Originally Posted by Chuck

Thanks for clarifying peacegirl!

Parents doing their due diligence, note that peacegirl has no problem with medical researchers administering drugs to healthy children without independent ethical oversight.

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We're using two different definitions.

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Originally Posted by Chuck

Conducting medical research on humans without independent ethical oversight is unethical. Andrew Wakefield unethically conducted medical research on children without independent ethical oversight.

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According to the definition, yes.

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Originally Posted by Chuck

Yes, Andrew Wakefield unethically conducted research on children without independent ethical oversight. That is one reason why he lost his medical license.

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He was a researcher which is even better. So that means he was a fraud? No. You're splitting hairs Chuck.

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Originally Posted by Chuck

Oh, many other things make him a fraud as well. This just makes him a particularly unethical fraud because of how he conducted medical research on children without independent ethical oversight.

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It sounds to me that someone could be harmed so ethical considerations would most certainly come into play.

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Originally Posted by Chuck

What? Merck just needs healthy children's blood for research purposes. They'll just go out to birthday parties and give kids $10 for it. peacegirl, do you agree that Merck does need to seek independent ethical oversight before sending representatives to childrens' birthday parties to pay children to take children's blood for research purposes?

You're exaggerating to make a point, but it doesn't fly. You cannot compare the two. It was a convenient way to get the blood he needed and it was in his own home. This could set a precedent for other doctors to do the same thing, which is why they had to draw the line.

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Here is an interesting article. Maybe you can expound on it.

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Originally Posted by Chuck

Maybe you can expound on it. No, you can't - because you didn't read it. You googled it, skimmed the headline, and thought it might be relevant (it's not) or at least distract from your bizarrely continuing defense of the fraudulent quack Andrew Wakefield.

I read it but it was difficult for me to understand everything. What I read is that there is a gray area where research meshes with treatment. Sometimes the ethical oversight may not be appropriate if the risk is low. I just wanted to understand it better. Forget it Chuck. I don't need your help.

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Originally Posted by Chuck

I know the Hastings Center, you fucking idiot. They are thought leaders in bioethics - organizations like the Hastings Center are one of the reasons that researchers seek independent ethical oversight of medical research involving humans. You should e-mail the Hastings Center and ask them whether researchers conducting medical research on children should seek independent ethical oversight.

Maybe you could do a little digging in their journal, which is titled IRB: Ethics & Human Research. Do you know what an IRB is, peacegirl? It's independent ethical oversight. You know, that thing Andrew Wakefield didn't bother to get before unethically conducting medical research on children.

peacegirl, are you entirely blind to the ethical morass that you're dragged into when you hitch your wagon to the fraudulent quack Andrew Wakefield? He unethically conducted medical research on children without independent oversight. And you think that's ok.

With all due respect, you're wrong. Wakefield may have made a mistake, but he's not a fraudulent quack. He will be vindicated.

Author/Journalist/Writing & Media Coach Home Page
Dr. Andrew Wakefield is one of the most vilified medical practitioners of recent times, and now he carries the extremely rare dishonor of a retraction in The Lancet, on the paper he coauthored in 1998 suggesting a potential link between autism, bowel disease and Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR) vaccine.

I believe that the public lynching and shaming of Dr. Wakefield is unwarranted and overwrought, and that history will ultimately judge who was right and who was wrong about proposing a possible association between vaccination and regressive autistic spectrum disorder (ASD).

Wakefield’s critics can condemn, retract, decry and de-license all they want, but that does nothing to stop or alter the march of science, which has come a long way over the past 12 years, and especially in the last year or two. The evidence that autism is increasing at alarming rates, and that some thing (or things) in our environment is wreaking havoc on a vulnerable one-percent of all US children is now so irrefutable that, finally, the federal government is climbing aboard the environmental research bandwagon - way late, but better than never.

Re: Parents, do your due diligence on vaccination! There are serious risks!!

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Originally Posted by peacegirl

If he already had a strong conscience, his conscience would continue to guide him in the right direction where the safety and well-being of others are concerned. There are sociopaths and psychopaths in this world who don't have a conscience. We all know that. Wakefield is not one of them.

And you know this ... how, again? Because he says so?

Well, that's settled, then!

__________________
“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.”

Re: Parents, do your due diligence on vaccination! There are serious risks!!

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Originally Posted by peacegirl

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Originally Posted by Chuck

What? Merck just needs healthy children's blood for research purposes. They'll just go out to birthday parties and give kids $10 for it. peacegirl, do you agree that Merck does need to seek independent ethical oversight before sending representatives to childrens' birthday parties to pay children to take children's blood for research purposes?

You're exaggerating to make a point, but it doesn't fly. You cannot compare the two. It was a convenient way to get the blood he needed and it was in his own home. This could set a precedent for other doctors to do the same thing, which is why they had to draw the line.

"Comparing" the two? They're doing exactly the same thing - sending representatives to a child's birthday party to collect blood from children for research purposes. You do not think that medical research on children requires any independent ethical oversight. I mean, that is an objectively immoral and horrifying thing for you to say, and it is fortunate that absolutely no one would ever seek you out as a moral authority for any reason whatsoever, but at least you are clear on that point.

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I read it but it was difficult for me to understand everything. What I read is that there is a gray area where research meshes with treatment. Sometimes the ethical oversight may not be appropriate if the risk is low. I just wanted to understand it better. Forget it Chuck. I don't need your help.

I have no particular interest in "helping" you.

Again you (either disingenuously or out of ineducable ignorance) continue to attempt to conflate research involving humans, which requires independent ethical oversight, with medical treatment in an attempt to excuse Andrew Wakefield's unethical conduct of medical research on children.

Of course, you have already pointed out in a separate attempt to defend Andrew Wakefield's unethical medical research on children that his unethical medical research for which he obtained no independent oversight involved healthy children at a birthday party; there was no treatment or therapeutic benefit involved.

But again, the basic fact is simple: Andrew Wakefield unethically conducted medical research on children without obtaining independent ethical oversight.

Re: Parents, do your due diligence on vaccination! There are serious risks!!

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Originally Posted by peacegirl

The evidence that autism is increasing at alarming rates, and that some thing (or things) in our environment is wreaking havoc on a vulnerable one-percent of all US children is now so irrefutable that, finally, the federal government is climbing aboard the environmental research bandwagon - way late, but better than never.

Maybe, but of course Wakefield's study wasn't on what causes autism it was trying to link vaccines with a disease, such as autism, and while autism may be caused by environmental factors, we know one factor that doesn't cause it, vaccines!

Re: Parents, do your due diligence on vaccination! There are serious risks!!

Look, it is really simple. Lone maverick researchers out to do good are nice guys. If there was anything really wrong with unofficially gathering blood samples at a birthday party at your house at a tenner a pop without ethical oversight, or conducting research while you are patenting a replacement vaccine and getting paid as a consultant for litigators looking to start a big lucrative case to do with those exact same vaccines without reporting a conflict of interest, then his conscience would not let him do it because he is a nice guy, so it is fine.

All those little details are at worst just minor oversights that do not in the least make them or their work suspect in any way. I mean, he is a maverick, right? He is going it alone in the face of a nameless, faceless monolith of uncaring government authorities being influenced by deep-pocketed corporations out to protect their interests. He is taking the path less traveled, selflessly risking it all in order to destroy the conspiracy of silence created by these money-grubbing, heartless corporate shills. And what more proof do you need when you look at the outcome? Just look at how he was tarred and feathered, pilloried, publicly lynched, hung, drawn and quartered! And for what? While what he did was technically against just about every rule for ethical research, the end result is that he was utterly annihilated down to the very last particle for mere peccadilloes because it involved disturbing their little money-making schemes!

So, there is no reason at all to assume there is anything wrong with Wakefield's study, and the way he was taken to task is just more proof how corrupt everybody else in that business is. Drain the swamp!

Of course, there are also guys who are not necessarily nice. These are the researchers whose studies we should not trust, because there is a lot of money involved in big pharma and conflicts of interest can easily creep in, as Peacegirl never ceases to warn us. And we all know how easily money changes hands in the shady, inhuman world of Big Pharma. Juicy consulting contracts handed to researchers that are supposed to be independent, shady kickbacks from the research into new medicines that no-one really needs in return for some fudged data... you name it. Knowing this should make us treat any study at all with deep suspicion!

So, there is every reason to assume there are things wrong with those studies, and the people involved should be taken to task in order to clear up the corruption that is rife in the medical system. Drain the swamp!

Re: Parents, do your due diligence on vaccination! There are serious risks!!

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Originally Posted by Vivisectus

Look, it is really simple. Lone maverick researchers out to do good are nice guys. If there was anything really wrong with unofficially gathering blood samples at a birthday party at your house at a tenner a pop without ethical oversight...

There was no money involved.

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Originally Posted by Vivisectus

or conducting research while you are patenting a replacement vaccine]

He was not patenting a vaccine or anything that was in competition with the MMR shot.

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Originally Posted by Vivisectus

and getting paid as a consultant for litigators looking to start a big lucrative case to do with those exact same vaccines without reporting a conflict of interest, then his conscience would not let him do it because he is a nice guy, so it is fine

He was not paid as a consultant for litigators in order to make a false case. You're right, his conscience would never have let him do it.

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Originally Posted by Vivisectus

All those little details are at worst just minor oversights that do not in the least make them or their work suspect in any way. I mean, he is a maverick, right? He is going it alone in the face of a nameless, faceless monolith of uncaring government authorities being influenced by deep-pocketed corporations out to protect their interests. He is taking the path less traveled, selflessly risking it all in order to destroy the conspiracy of silence created by these money-grubbing, heartless corporate shills. And what more proof do you need when you look at the outcome? Just look at how he was tarred and feathered, pilloried, publicly lynched, hung, drawn and quartered! And for what? While what he did was technically against just about every rule for ethical research, the end result is that he was utterly annihilated down to the very last particle for mere peccadilloes because it involved disturbing their little money-making schemes!

That's not what this was about. He was contacted by parents because he was a researcher of gastroenterology and their children were suffering. He didn't pick and choose the children to make his study look clean. He didn't break any rules. He got ethical approval other than at the birthday party.

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Originally Posted by Vivisectus

So, there is no reason at all to assume there is anything wrong with Wakefield's study, and the way he was taken to task is just more proof how corrupt everybody else in that business is. Drain the swamp!

Right, it's about making sure his reputation gets decimated so no one would even question the validity of his study.

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Originally Posted by Vivisectus

Of course, there are also guys who are not necessarily nice. These are the researchers whose studies we should not trust, because there is a lot of money involved in big pharma and conflicts of interest can easily creep in, as Peacegirl never ceases to warn us. And we all know how easily money changes hands in the shady, inhuman world of Big Pharma. Juicy consulting contracts handed to researchers that are supposed to be independent, shady kickbacks from the research into new medicines that no-one really needs in return for some fudged data... you name it. Knowing this should make us treat any study at all with deep suspicion!

So, there is every reason to assume there are things wrong with those studies, and the people involved should be taken to task in order to clear up the corruption that is rife in the medical system. Drain the swamp!

And if you need to know which is which, just ask Peacegirl.

__________________"We will not solve the problems of the world from the level of thinking we were at when we created them" -- Einstein﻿

﻿"The fatal tendency of mankind to leave off thinking about a thing
which is no longer doubtful is the cause of half their errors" -- John Stuart Mill

Re: Parents, do your due diligence on vaccination! There are serious risks!!

"Homeschool organizations in four states (Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Oregon) were asked to forward an email to their members, requesting mothers to complete an anonymous online questionnaire on the vaccination status and health outcomes of their biological children ages 6 to 12. [...]

A total of 415 mothers provided data on 666 children, of which 261 (39%) were unvaccinated. Vaccinated children were significantly less likely than the unvaccinated to have been diagnosed with chickenpox and pertussis, but significantly more likely to have been diagnosed with pneumonia, otitis media, allergies and NDDs (defined as Autism Spectrum Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and/or a learning disability)."

There’s another interesting wrinkle to this paper, and that’s who peer reviewed it. One of the peer reviewers was Linda Mullin Elkins, a chiropractor at Life University, a “university” that portrays itself as:

We are at the forefront of the vitalistic health revolution by offering studies within the fields of Chiropractic, Functional Kinesiology, Vitalistic Nutrition, Positive Psychology, Functional Neurology and Positive Business, using entrepreneurship for social change.

“Vitalistic nutrition”? “Functional kinesiology”? “Vitalistic health revolution”? Yes, there’s some serious, serious woo there. Elkins is not a qualified peer reviewer for a paper like this—or for any peer reviewer. Then there is the issue of the journal itself. Frontiers in Public Health is published by Frontiers Media, which is on Beall’s list of predatory open access publishers. Such predatory open access journals follow a business model that involves charging publication fees to authors to publish just about anything.

So yeah. The study () got yanked by a vanity publishing outfit.

__________________"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis D. Brandeis

Re: Parents, do your due diligence on vaccination! There are serious risks!!

[quote]

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Originally Posted by peacegirl

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Originally Posted by Vivisectus

Look, it is really simple. Lone maverick researchers out to do good are nice guys. If there was anything really wrong with unofficially gathering blood samples at a birthday party at your house at a tenner a pop without ethical oversight...

There was no money involved.

Another fine example of due diligence and research by our favorite crusader for truth and vaccine safety! Actually, there was, as came out in his fitness to practice hearing. You can look it up if you want. But hey, let's not let this discussion get dominated by mere facts! Better to just claim there was no money involved when you don't actually know if there was or wasn't.

In fairness, I was wrong too. It was actually a fiver.

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Vivisectus

or conducting research while you are patenting a replacement vaccine]

He was not patenting a vaccine or anything that was in competition with the MMR shot.

Again - stellar investigative work from a concerned parent doing her due dilligence!

I mean just because patent application 9711663.6 states explicitly that "the present invention relates to a new vaccine for the elimination of MMR and measles virus" and then goes on to mention that "I have therefor now discovered a combined vaccine/therapeutic agent which is not only most probably safer to administer to neonates and others by way of vaccination" does not mean it was in competition, per se.

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Originally Posted by Vivisectus

and getting paid as a consultant for litigators looking to start a big lucrative case to do with those exact same vaccines without reporting a conflict of interest, then his conscience would not let him do it because he is a nice guy, so it is fine

He was not paid as a consultant for litigators in order to make a false case. You're right, his conscience would never have let him do it.

Exactly! No need to worry about the half million pounds he was paid by litigators looking to create a lucrative class action suit: he would never have taken that money in order to make a false case. It is only a conflict of interest if bad people get paid, like lobbyists for big pharma.

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Originally Posted by Vivisectus

All those little details are at worst just minor oversights that do not in the least make them or their work suspect in any way. I mean, he is a maverick, right? He is going it alone in the face of a nameless, faceless monolith of uncaring government authorities being influenced by deep-pocketed corporations out to protect their interests. He is taking the path less traveled, selflessly risking it all in order to destroy the conspiracy of silence created by these money-grubbing, heartless corporate shills. And what more proof do you need when you look at the outcome? Just look at how he was tarred and feathered, pilloried, publicly lynched, hung, drawn and quartered! And for what? While what he did was technically against just about every rule for ethical research, the end result is that he was utterly annihilated down to the very last particle for mere peccadilloes because it involved disturbing their little money-making schemes!

That's not what this was about. He was contacted by parents because he was a researcher of gastroenterology and their children were suffering. He didn't pick and choose the children to make his study look clean. He didn't break any rules. He got ethical approval other than at the birthday party.

Exactly: all those pesky little details don't matter if it is a selfless savior of sick little babbies is concerned. He didn't break any rules. Independent ethical oversight and disclosure of possible conflicts of interests are more, like, guidelines.

But those big companies? They are shady, man! Constantly passing each other juicy little consulting deals, and making sure it is in a researchers best interest to find things a certain way. Totally suspect!

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Vivisectus

So, there is no reason at all to assume there is anything wrong with Wakefield's study, and the way he was taken to task is just more proof how corrupt everybody else in that business is. Drain the swamp!

Right, it's about making sure his reputation gets decimated so no one would even question the validity of his study.

Decimated! I knew I skipped a hyperbole.

See? When nice guys get taken to task for breaking the rules it is evidence of a conspiracy to silence them.

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Vivisectus

Of course, there are also guys who are not necessarily nice. These are the researchers whose studies we should not trust, because there is a lot of money involved in big pharma and conflicts of interest can easily creep in, as Peacegirl never ceases to warn us. And we all know how easily money changes hands in the shady, inhuman world of Big Pharma. Juicy consulting contracts handed to researchers that are supposed to be independent, shady kickbacks from the research into new medicines that no-one really needs in return for some fudged data... you name it. Knowing this should make us treat any study at all with deep suspicion!

So, there is every reason to assume there are things wrong with those studies, and the people involved should be taken to task in order to clear up the corruption that is rife in the medical system. Drain the swamp!

Re: Parents, do your due diligence on vaccination! There are serious risks!!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vivisectus

But those big companies? They are shady, man! Constantly passing each other juicy little consulting deals, and making sure it is in a researchers best interest to find things a certain way. Totally suspect!

Fear not, Vivisectus - I am informed that the actions of consultants and lobbyists for global pharmaceutical and vaccine manufacturers are entirely ethical at all times. Their consciences would not permit them to proceed otherwise.

There’s another interesting wrinkle to this paper, and that’s who peer reviewed it. One of the peer reviewers was Linda Mullin Elkins, a chiropractor at Life University, a “university” that portrays itself as:

We are at the forefront of the vitalistic health revolution by offering studies within the fields of Chiropractic, Functional Kinesiology, Vitalistic Nutrition, Positive Psychology, Functional Neurology and Positive Business, using entrepreneurship for social change.

“Vitalistic nutrition”? “Functional kinesiology”? “Vitalistic health revolution”? Yes, there’s some serious, serious woo there. Elkins is not a qualified peer reviewer for a paper like this—or for any peer reviewer. Then there is the issue of the journal itself. Frontiers in Public Health is published by Frontiers Media, which is on Beall’s list of predatory open access publishers. Such predatory open access journals follow a business model that involves charging publication fees to authors to publish just about anything.

So yeah. The study () got yanked by a vanity publishing outfit.

I saw the reviewer from "Life University" an figured that the paper wouldn't have a problem from them, but I was mildly surprised at the review from an actual PhD from a real university.

Ever since the last time peacegirl brought up this, I've been tempted to contact this other reviewer, just to see how they justified allowing this to be published.